EF gets updates on the budget, renovation costs

Elizabeth Forward School Board finance and operations Director Al Ragan also updated the board on delinquent taxes collected.

Elizabeth Forward School Board discussed delinquent real estate taxes, the future budget and budgeting out the high school renovation project at its committee of the whole meeting Wednesday.

So far, the district has collected $738,000 of the 2024-25 delinquent taxes. The district budgeted to collect around $1.15 million in delinquent taxes, according to district Director of Finance and Operations Al Ragan, who said the district is right on track.

“For those of you who don’t know what that is, we have our delinquent taxes that get turned over every year for our delinquent tax revenues at the end of December, which get turned over to our correction legal firm, and every year we look at what we can collect from what is turned over,” Ragan said.

For the 2025 real estate property bills, the board is set to approve Sept. 2, Oct. 15 and Dec. 1 as installment payment dates for tax bills.

Budget updates

Ragan had anticipated that medical insurance for employees would spike by about 9%, but it is around a 5.7% increase now.

The proposed budget would be around $36,971,000, according to Ragan. He said the district saved around $149,000 on health insurance and by eliminating a $170,000 transition coordinator position.

“Some other things played into this,” Ragan said. “I added some money to this budget for psychological evaluations, because we are seeing a need for that, so we are at $20,000 for that, and then another $16,000 for virtual student teachers. Things came down a bit.”

Steel has started to be erected at the high school renovation project, as well as boiler room walls, masonry work and more, according to David McLean of McLean Architects, LLC, who gave a presentation to the board.

McLean discussed needed change orders, including board decisions on some lighting and electrical work as well as communication change orders.

Ragan said the district has paid for 23% of the high school renovations so far, and the projected timeline for Phase 1 to be completed is still around October 2026. Phase 1 is estimated to be around $75 million, leaving about $58 million left to spend and $22 million to fund construction.

“When we looked at what we were going to spend and how we were going to spend it, we looked at it as sort of a bell curve,” Ragan said. “The first 25% was expected to be spent by March 31, which is $18 million. There is still $4 million left that we didn’t spend on that.”

One of the deadlines for the district includes completing the existing high school building by the time students have to be back for the 2025-26 school year on Sept. 1, according to Ragan, which will require the district to spend around $17 million.

Going through what was left of the first 25% spent to that $17 million is going to leave about $400,000 left, Ragan said, and they are planning on having a total of $50 million in bank qualified borrowing, which will get the district until the end of the year.

“The good news is, this borrowing of nearly $50 million, the savings from the schools and interest rates from six months ago, will cover (everything),” Ragan said. “I just want to give everyone an idea of where we are at. We spent 23%, there’s a plan to cover two huge parts of this deal, one is the existing building. The other is the gym, the mechanical plant and the old band area.”

Many board members thanked Ragan for his work, and they also discussed paying invoices past due dates, which they haven’t done, as well as the progress at the school.

Some parents argued that it is a “big mess” at the high school, but administrators said they are getting the work done as best they can.

“It’s really nice to see things in three dimensions coming out of the ground,” McClean said. “It’s been a lot of foundation work and a lot of underground stuff, but now we are starting to see things take shape.”

Other items to be voted on next week include:

• An agreement with the district and the PAAcademy of Driving for driving instruction and testing of students.

• Another agreement to bring in Global Wordsmiths Language Services for translation of some exams for English as a second language students.